Natalia Mela’s sculptures regain sparkle

Two years after the death of Natalia Mela, 11 of the Greek sculptor’s artworks on the Saronic island of Spetses are getting the finishing touches in a restoration program. The imaginative sculptures – including goats, a bull, an owl and a trident-holding siren watching over the Old Harbor – had been damaged by exposure to the elements since the creation of the open-air exhibition in 1993. “These sculptures are like her roots; they will always be here,” Mela’s daughter, Alexandra Tsoukala, told Kathimerini. Mela, the granddaughter of Pavlos Melas, the leader of the armed struggle to free the Greek province of Macedonia from the Turkish yoke in the Greco-Turkish War (1897), died two years ago Wednesday at the age of 96.